This is my latest project - becoming the Glastonbury Alternative Community's historian. I'm taking it from 1970, the year before the Glastonbury Fair at Worthy Farm, up until just past the Millennium, when I run out of printed source material (the community has mostly expressed itself on-line since then).

Here's a mock-up of the cover. The picture I'd like to use is of the Millennium celebrations on Glastonbury Tor - perhaps the alternative community's most publicly visible project to date. The photograph is by Richie Bond, who was living in Glastonbury at the time but who has since died - I'm hoping to get permission to use it from his family, when the time comes.

At the moment the working title is 'Free State' (as in 'Free State of Avalonia' etc), which isn't bad but it's the same title as I used for the magazine I was editing between 1998 and 2001. I decided not to use 'The New Avalonians,' following Patrick Benham's book (see post from July 2012), because once I started working on it I soon realised that the present-day community is not a follow-on from the Avalonian personalities who were here in the first half of the last century. Rather, they were the precursors to what has been happening since 1970.

Anyway, for the time being I'm writing, and really enjoying it. I'm up to about 1987 so far, mostly based on material published in Glastonbury's community magazines. If anyone sees this and feels that they have a contribution they could add, please get in touch ...

Development consent was granted on March 19th; seven months later, and still nothing has been said (officially) about construction work going ahead. EDF have laid off most iof their workforce and there were hopes that they may have given up.

Then a month ago the government, as part of its 'spending review,' said that they would be underwriting the construction costs by up to £10 billion. £10 billion! The local press declared that it would surely be going ahead now - but still no announcement from the government or from EDF.

Presumably the negotiations still continue, in which case the £10bn was just the latest negotiating position - and EDF still want more.